The world of wireless telecommunications is entering a new era with the advent of personal communications services (PCS). The constant trend toward lower and lower subscriber acquisition costs and higher market penetration is creating a demand for more effective ways to offer the wireless service to broader segments of the population. However, a large percentage of applicants are normally turned away from wireless carriers due to poor or insufficient credit, although many of these applicants do possess the ability to pay for the service. Accordingly, a growing segment within the wireless telecommunications market is the prepaid wireless service.
The typical wireless service requires its subscriber caller to deposit a certain amount of funds, by cash, credit card, and/or other means, into an account. As the caller uses the wireless service, the account balance is deducted. As long as there are funds in the account, the caller may continue to use the wireless service. Additional deposits may be made to replenish the account balance.
There are however, several disadvantages associated with traditional prepaid wireless accounts. First, the caller may be required to enter an additional authorization code or personal identification number (PIN) in order to place each call. Some debit cards or debit systems may require the customer to enter as many as 31 additional digits. Second, the traditional prepaid wireless services lack the ability to disconnect a call during the call when the account balance is fully depleted. Third, there is substantial lag time between the time of the call and the time the amount of funds expended by a call is posted to the account. Therefore, it may be seen that the wireless service provider experiences credit exposure with post call billing and the inability to disconnect calls as soon as the accounts are depleted of funds. While these problems are most acute in the wireless industry, they are also a problem in other telecommunications systems.
Further, if an incoming call is recognized as an unregistered roaming call, the cellular switch typically routes the call to an 1-800 number which then prompts the caller to provide an alternative form of payment, such as by credit card. The unregistered roaming call is thus processed off-site. A disadvantage of the conventional method is that the off-site processor does not have the caller's identity such as the customer group office code (NPA-NXX) or mobile identification number (MIN) to perform certain verification and fraud detection tasks. Further, the caller is required to reenter the called party's telephone number.